Research Goals and Outcomes

There are two sets of research questions for the MTV project. They are centered
around two WISE pedagogical frameworks, namely, Making Thinking Visible, and Help
Students Learn From One Another.

Make Thinking Visible.
Here, we extend the notion of "making thinking visible" to utilize
visual modes
of representation in two ways. First, we engage students in drawing tasks to make
their models explicit and use these as knowledge artifacts for both model
revision as well as collaborative discourse. Second, we provide students with a set
of dynamic, runnable models of plate tectonic phenomena. Here, students
use the runnable prototypes to visualize dynamic, causal, and temporal
processes in order to test, critique, and revise their own models. WISE
prompts students to justify and explain their changes in order to reify
learning. Prompts include: "What does your new model include
that it didn't before?", and "What does your new model describe or explain that
it didn't before?"

Research questions around this pedagogical framework are:

In what ways does model-building in WISE promote a deeper understanding of
content knowledge in plate tectonics?

In what ways do students' on-line critique of their peers' models influence
model revision?

In what ways does learning with dynamic runnable visual models in WISE
promote a deeper understanding of content knowledge in plate tectonics?

In what ways do these modeling activities in WISE influence students'
epistemologies about the nature of scientific models?

Other issues being addressed around this pedagogical framework include findings
about students' learning with respect to: model-based reasoning, the
affordances made by "visualizing" and insight into how these processes may be
different from conventional pencil and paper model-based tasks.

In MTV we also seek to promote students' knowledge integration by Helping
Students Learn from One Another. The goal here is to promote students' inquiry
and knowledge integration by having students engage in discourse while
addressing intriguing questions that are personally relevant. We do this in
two ways: First, we engage students in discourse about the evolution of
the theory of plate tectonics. The goal here is to promote both understanding
about the evolution of Plate Tectonics as well as epistemological understanding
of how scientific theories are developed and changed, how theories relate to
evidence, and what is taken as evidence in science. Secondly, we engage
east and west coast students in discourse about plate tectonic-related
phenomena, using intriguing questions about the geological phenomena in each
geographical area.

Research questions around this pedagogical framework are:

In what ways does collaborative discourse on-line in WISE promote a deeper
understanding of content knowledge in plate tectonics?

In what ways does collaborative discourse on-line influence students'
epistemologies about the nature of scientific models?

Other issues being addressed around this pedagogical framework include the
types of explanations students' construct for each other and how meaning is
co-constructed in collaborative discourse.